


Papercuts

by Linane



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Brief Mentions of a Miscarriage, Brief mentions of suicide, But if you haven't ran away screaming yet I will say this:, Happy Ending, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Oh boy how do I tag this, and then put you back together, but happy tears, emiotional H/C, h/c, like there will be tears, terminal illness, this is the sort of story to fuck you up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:09:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/pseuds/Linane
Summary: Written for the Winter FRE 2017 and as per the usual gotten completely out of hand. I don't know why my Muse and I descended to the levels of hell that we did, but here we are.Prompt 160: I'm destined to die in 2 weeks but I just met you and want to do all my life goals before dying.





	

He watches the man sleep.

Blond hair pulled back into a single, messy braid, strands slipping out precariously. Facial hair trimmed into a neat beard curling comfortably around his mouth. And kind eyes: surrounded by the network of laugh lines, with lashes pale and delicate.

The eyes are Kili’s favourite.

 

\---

 

Fili sometimes thinks the message was harder on the doctor than himself.

A degenerative disease not unlike cancer. Only much more rare and far more aggressive. Made worse by a specific combination of genes, one that Fili carries. Seventeen cases in recent years. The longest one lasted a month.

Not enough is known yet to determine if it will attack his heart first or his brain. It would be better if it was his heart.

No cure.

 

\---

 

The rage didn’t come immediately, it took its time. It wasn’t until three days later that Fili screamed and threw the cut-glass tumbler of whiskey at the wall, watching it shatter. Then the bottle, and anything else made of glass he could find.

It brought him savage satisfaction to be able to destroy things.

No questions any more at this point, only blind, bitter rage.

He screamed and screamed and screamed until everything was switched off.

 

\---

 

“About three weeks, the tests suggest.”

Silence.

“Have you got anyone who could help you through this difficult time? Family, friends?”

“No.”

“Surely, there is someone.”

“My mother died two years ago, father five. I have no siblings and you don’t ask friends to watch you die.”

“… I see. In that case, I think you should look into palliative care. We can recommend some excellent companies that will help you… finalise things.”

 

\---

 

He watches the man sleep.

Kili doesn’t interrupt – sleep is an important source of solace.

It’s the nurse’s entry that finally makes the blond stir.

“Ah, there you are,” she says as if her patient could be anywhere else. “It’s been almost a whole day. Doctor Bergman says everything is in order and you can be released home now.”

“Home…?” Fili mutters, rubbing his eyes and wincing when he tries to sit up.

“Yes, home. With Kili. Remember Kili?” she chatters on when Fili blinks at her slowly. “Don’t worry, that’d be the anaesthetic still in your system. Temporary loss of short-term memory is a known side-effect. Kili is a living-in carer; he will stay with you. You signed the papers this morning, before the procedure. I can bring them, if you like?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Fili’s voice is pleasant enough but he goes all stiff as soon as he realises that there’s another person in the room, blue eyes watching Kili warily.

“Hi again. We’ve been through this before, but I don’t mind repeating: I don’t bite, you don’t have to be afraid. Unless I’m asked really nicely,” he breaks into a grin.

There’s a moment of stunned silence and then Fili erupts into about of brilliant, deep laughter, clutching at his chest when it causes too much sudden movement.

It’s been too long, Kili guesses and helps gather Fili’s things.

 

\---

 

When he can, Fili tries to keep himself busy; when he can’t he relies on Kili to do it for him.

The last two boxes left after Dis are one of those things he should have sorted out a long time ago, but there was always a reason to do something else instead.

Now he opens the dusty shoebox with photographs and a few papers. He wonders who will sort out his own boxes – and cuts the thought off mercilessly.

Instead he focuses on what appears to be an old medical record in his hands.

Age: 17  
Suspected reason for miscarriage: chromosomal abnormalities.

The box falls from his hands and Fili feels like he’s choking.

“Fili? Fili, look at me. Breathe together with me.”

He obeys and closes his eyes against the tears.

She never said a word.

 

\---

 

“You know that it’s okay to have a breakdown in front of me, right?” Kili asks, fixing the pillow and squatting next to the sofa.

Fili won’t; he’s stronger than most. Quiet, watchful, fiercely independent. He should be lashing out at Kili, but he doesn’t, something instead making him humble, listening, asking, talking, as if the circumstances were completely different.

“I suppose you’ve seen this kind of thing many times before,” he murmurs instead, eyes heavy and tired. “But it’s my first time dying, so please let me figure this out for myself.”

Kili smiles but there’s a pang in his chest that makes him feel all wrong. “Everybody’s different,” he replies truthfully. “I just wanted you to know that you had the option.”

“Sometimes I hate you. You’ll get to see the next Star Wars, and I won’t. You could still fall in love and I can’t. You’ll stay here and I won’t. Does this make me fall more in line with your other cases?” he smiles and his dimples make an appearance.

 _Most of the time I don’t hate you at all,_ Fili doesn’t say.

“You can,” Kili argues, instead of answering.

“I’m sorry?”

“Fall in love, I mean. It’s not something that’s time-limited.”

 

\---

 

“Ready?” Kili pauses with the remote raised dramatically over the blue-ray.

“I still can’t believe you did this for me!” Fili wriggles, making himself more comfortable against Kili’s shoulder.

“I told you: I know a guy who knows a guy. It wasn’t even all that difficult. And remember what I said – it isn’t yet fully edited.”

“I find this really hard to believe after how much they tried to crack down on any leaks.”

“Do you want to watch or not?!” Kili huffs.

“Alright, alright. Play.”

 _Long time ago in a galaxy far away_ the letters appear on the screen yellow and bold, and for two and a half blissful hours Fili is alive once again.

 

\---

 

The list is somehow a natural progression from the conversations with his carer.

It makes him think in a way he’s used to, makes him smile and breathe, as he carefully writes down all the things he wants to accomplish before he dies:

1\. Fall in love.

He falls asleep with the sixteenth point slipping precariously into an illegible scrawl and a strong conviction that this is _his_ list, never to be seen by Kili.

 

\---

 

It’s when Fili collapses for the first time that the sense of wrongness increases in Kili into something that can’t be ignored any more.

He grabs for his jacket and hauls him against his chest, holding on tight and ignoring the groceries rolling down the stairs as Fili sways and gasps.

“I forgot the painkillers this morning,” he confesses later, sitting down with a cup of tea. “By the time I remembered we were nearly at the shop and I thought I could make it.”

Kili finds himself angry. But anger is unprofessional, he reminds himself, and turns to put the shopping away without a word, completely missing how the blue eyes trace his movements.

 

\---

 

For Fili it starts with gratitude.

It keeps him awake at night, making him carefully untangle it from the other emotion, very similar but warmer.

Then there’s curiosity, intelligence, easy camaraderie and endless topics.

He finds he has things to give, which he didn’t think he had, and he offers them without a second thought.

He watches, he smiles, he teases.

It brings him joy to have something so normal, so much like life.

 

\---

 

“I can’t just… fly myself to Iceland!”

“Why not?! It’s not like you have places to be, things to do. You want to see the northern lights and I’m making it happen.” Kili doesn’t even pause in his packing of Fili’s carry-on bag, instead shoots him a cheeky grin, like he already knows he’s won. “It’s the perfect time of the year now, the weather forecast looks great and we could be back inside three days.”

“You were never meant to see that list,” Fili huffs, but moves to the wardrobe to retrieve his scarf and a hat.

“I wouldn’t be much of a carer if I didn’t get my hands on it. I swear sometimes you’re so preoccupied with dying that you need someone to remind you what it’s like to be alive!”

Fili is still mulling over that last sentence when they land in Reykyavik, but on the whole he’s forced to admit that Kili is right.

Wrapped up in thermal gear, blankets and Kili, thirty miles north from the city and with eyes filled with wonder, Fili falls a little deeper.

 

\---

 

He watches the man sleep.

The things he sees now are different. It’s been close to two weeks and he can see a person slowly breaking. Fili is losing weight, starting to forget things. He has better days and worse days.

But Kili also sees so much more than this.

He sees humour, complexity of thoughts, strength of Fili’s conviction. Courage and kindness, keen interest and an odd sense of protectiveness directed towards himself.

He comes closer and takes a seat at the edge of the bed and carefully tries to untangle himself.

 

\---

 

The roasted chicken dinner isn’t the top of Fili’s repertoire, but it’s the best he can manage at the moment.

With Kili sent away on an errand to the library, Fili fights his way through the spells of dizziness and headache and forces himself to rub the herbs into the meat, to chop up the greens, to pour the wine.

He lights the candles, takes more pills and makes himself wait.

The beeping of the oven coincides with the sound of the key in the lock and Fili jerks himself back to reality, making one wineglass topple over and spill its contents all over the pristine white tablecloth.

His knuckles are white around the edge of the table when another, cold hand closes around his own.

“For me?”

“Yes. I - fuck. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s okay. Smells heavenly.”

“No, it really isn’t!” he snaps. “I – It’s the last few days. This was a stupid idea. You shouldn’t mourn me for what I can’t be for you. I just thought –“

“Fili.” Arms close around him from behind, slow and giving him time to push away as they wind around his hips and waist, gently encouraging him to lean back. “I want to have dinner with you,” lips whisper against his shoulder and it’s so simple that Fili forgets to overthink it.

They eat, they drink, they laugh and for a time Fili is happy.

 

\---

 

Fili dreams about flying.

He’s in a fighter jet, doing dizzying speeds and watching the land below scamper away.

“You’re in control now,” a familiar voice sounds in his ear and he realises that somehow Kili is in the plane with him, probably in the second pilot’s seat.

Just the two of them and the entire sky open for them.

He doesn’t know how he knows what to do but he nudges the control gently to the side and puts the plane in a gentle swoop.

He feels the sheer joy blossom in his chest when the machine obeys and grants him freedom he’s never experienced before.

Later, over breakfast, he decides to strike it off his list, even if it was just a dream.

It felt real enough for him.

 

\---

 

They’re in Tuscany and Fili has three days left.

“How did we get here again?” Fili asks and blinks, surveying the beautiful valley sprawling in the distance.

“We flew. Don’t you remember?” Kili replies distractedly, buttering up the scones.

“They hoped it would destroy my heart before it destroyed my mind. I guess they were wrong.”

He’s so calm about it that Kili drops the buttering knife.

“You’re not –“

“Kiss me, Kili.”

And somehow, without any conscious thought Kili moves in to do just that. It explodes between them, gentle and warm, fingers sinking into soft hair and Kili moans at the intimate contact because he can’t control himself.

Fili gives a contented sigh and lies back on the picnic blanket, fitting perfectly with the meadow full of softly swaying flowers.

Kili forgets the scones, instead watches the sun caressing the pale skin, watches life in the blue eyes.

“You know… generally having kissed someone once, you are allowed to kiss them again,” Fili offers, stretching lazily.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never –“ it comes out before he can stop it.

“What, never? Not once?” Fili blinks at him, pushing himself up to his elbows. “Well in that case you should _definitely_ kiss me again.”

 

\---

 

Contrary to the popular belief, Kili likes his job.

He finds value in being there when it all ends, enjoys the power to help people through it.

He takes away their fear – and they are always so very afraid. He’s there to listen, to meticulously catalogue all those final woes and wishes. He is gentle in his work, and kind. Kinder than most.

In a way it gives him a sense of being alive. In a way it allows him to care.

 

\---

 

He watches the man sleep.

It’s fitful and filled with pained gasps. Fili hates losing himself, but where Kili should be saying ‘it’s okay. Let go,’ instead he wants to say ‘fight. Fight it!”

He knows it’s futile of course, but I doesn’t stop him placing a hand on Fili’s chest and taking away the pain that the drugs are no longer capable of dimming down.

 

\---

 

“I can’t tell what’s a dream and what’s reality anymore.” It terrifies Kili, as if on behalf of the man he’s looking after. “But in both you’re here with me, so I’m not afraid.”

 

\---

 

They’re in Venice and Fili has eighteen hours left.

He wants peaches and Kili leaves him sitting on the edge of a fountain while he gets some. He stops by the ice cream stand, thinking that these will be perfect with the fruit on a hot day like this, when he hears the first screams.

By the time he pushes through the crowd Fili is on the pavement, twisting in agony as blood gushes from his mouth and nose.

“Fili!” Kili is by his side in an instant, capturing and containing the sickness, dialling down the pain.

Slowly, comprehension and recognition returns to the blue eyes and Fili allows himself to be hauled up to sit back on the edge of the fountain, while Kili helps him wash off the blood.

“What are you?” Fili asks three hours later, biting into the perfect, sweet peach with an expression of clear pleasure on his face. He looks at the dying sun painting them golden above the sea, instead of Kili. “These –“ he licks off the juice running down his wrist, “- are real. And we can’t really be here. So. What are you? My guardian angel?”

“I’m a reaper.” It comes out quiet and mournful, because Kili is ashamed that he can’t be anything else.

“Explain.”

“I… I reap the souls. When it’s time. I like to stay with them for a while. Before… they’re gone.”

Silence. Fierce battle within the soul he came to care for so deeply, but Fili is tired, so impossibly tired.

“Take me home.”

 

\---

 

“How long. Exactly.”

“Six hours and twenty seven minutes.”

“Do it now.”

“No.”

“Don’t you think we’ve hurt each other enough as it is?!”

“I can’t. It doesn’t work like this. This isn’t your time.”

“And what if I make it my time? What if I went to the roof and jumped? Would you take my soul then?!”

“You wouldn’t die. You’d live, except in far more pain, for another six hours and twenty seven minutes.”

Fili actually snarls at that.

 

\---

 

“Make love to me.”

He’s done fighting. He’s done hurting. Now he just wants something to stop him thinking, to stop him feeling. He wants to waste away his time on pleasure and blissful oblivion.

“No. You wouldn’t want it like that.”

No, he wouldn’t.

 

\---

 

He comes round again in the hospital, to the infuriating buzz and beeping of a battery of machines.

Kili is in the chair next to the bed, looking miserable.

“How long?”

“Less than four minutes.”

Fili closes his eyes and shivers when Kili reaches into his chest to retrieve something dark and twisting sinuously.

“This is what’s killing you,” the reaper says, containing it easily in his palm, his eyes old, much older than Fili ever noticed them to be.

In his other hand something impossibly black appears, as if it’s sucking the light out of the room.

“And that?”

“That is death. When the time is right, I will push it into your soul and it will shatter. You will cease to exist.”

He doesn’t feel fear, even though he probably should. Instead there’s only overwhelming regret. That he should be allowed to love, in his final days, that he should find something so perfectly his own and not be allowed to keep it.

“I love you,” he whispers, looking deep into the inhuman brown eyes. “I always will.”

And this is true, has always been true, as if Fili waited all his life for a chance to die, so he could meet his reaper. He’s always been brave with the strength of those he cared about.

He brushes his fingertips along Kili’s cheek, carefully allowing himself to cradle the side of his face. “Now do it. It must be almost time.”

“I’m sorry,” Kili whispers, eyes closing as he draws the little bit of comfort from Fili’s touch. “I’m a reaper. Death is my only purpose and I can never have another. It is time. A soul is due, so a soul must be reaped.”

He opens his eyes and, just for a moment, there’s this cheeky, lopsided grin and instead of the sentient being there’s only Kili, only Fili’s, as if in direct contradiction to his own words.

And then, just like that, Kili pushes both the sickness and death deep inside himself.

He blinks and then he’s gone.

 

\---

 

“Have you any idea what you have done?”

He struggles to breathe, to exist, to not be torn apart.

“Do you know what happens to a reaper who has destroyed its own soul?”

Suddenly everything becomes crystal clear, everything he has lost, everything he always had, but kept locked away inside himself.

 

\---

 

“Have you thought of a name yet?”

“It’s far too early. The first trimester is the most dangerous.”

“So you have.”

“… Kili. But you can’t tell anyone.”

 

\---

 

“They become mortal.”

 

\---

 

He gasps as everything slams back into him and screams when there’s too much input for him to comprehend.

“Kili! Look at me, just focus on me! That’s it, just breathe with me. You’re okay, everything’s going to be okay.”

“S- So much,” he pants out. “I can f-feel so much. How can you cope? It’s… it’s too much!”

“Focus on one thing, one emotion. What do you feel?”

He’s on the bed with Fili, uncaring of the multitude of IVs dripping their liquids to the floor. People in the corridor, light, beds, smell of disinfectant, coarse fabric of the sheets –

\- Fili’s thumb at the nape of his neck, rubbing slow circles there.

“Loved. I feel loved.”

 

\---


End file.
